


A Moment's Rest

by goddess_of_flowers_and_death



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe, Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, mentions of injury, mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-19
Updated: 2017-05-19
Packaged: 2018-11-02 14:22:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10946346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goddess_of_flowers_and_death/pseuds/goddess_of_flowers_and_death
Summary: In a quiet moment, Jyn, Cassian, and Bodhi rest together.





	A Moment's Rest

Bodhi hadn’t stopped shaking yet. He had been tossed carelessly through the cell door at least half an hour ago, though it was hard for Jyn to gauge time effectively in here. Despite her numerous experiences in Imperial prisons, she never quite mastered keeping time from within the cell. At least in Wobani they kept to a steady schedule. Here, Jyn was sure their Imperial keepers were changing the lights-out times and meal schedules just to screw with them.

Bodhi had been almost catatonic since the ‘troopers had returned him to the cell. He was lying now where Jyn and Cassian had positioned him as gently as they could, with his head in Jyn’s lap and his hands tentatively tucked between Cassian’s palms. He was trembling all over, and his eyes were wide and unfocused.

Jyn was terrified. It took longer and longer every time he was thrown back in for his mind to return from the Imperial torture chamber. At first, he had flinched and muttered in the aftermath, rambled softly, incoherently. But he was beginning to lose his words, and that frightened Jyn more than anything else. As long as she had known him, though truthfully it seemed much longer than it really was, he had always seemed to talk more when he was nervous. Now the pilot had fallen silent, and it weighed heavier on her chest than his overt terror.

Cassian seemed focused entirely on Bodhi’s hands in his, rubbing his thumbs over the sweat-streaked backs of the pilot’s fingers, careful not to touch the raw, bloody nailbeds that were just starting to loosely scab over or to jar his own three broken fingers. Jyn watched him, running her own fingers absently, soothingly, over Bodhi’s matted hair. The captain’s mouth was set in a tired scowl, his eyes dull with pain and resignation. His body had been broken and patched back together so many times already, and he was starting to smell consistently of stale sweat and old bacta. Jyn wanted to say something, to break the silence that weighed on her tongue and squeezed her battered ribs in around her lungs, but she found that no words would come. She opened her mouth once, then again, as if trying to physically prompt the words, but the silence won out.

Her fingers caught suddenly on a tangle in Bodhi’s dark, ragged ponytail, a tangle that had woven itself into a large mat. As gently as she could, her own hands unsteady with exhaustion and malnutrition, Jyn dug her fingers into the bottom of the thick tangle and started picking it apart. Cassian noticed, but didn’t speak, just gave her a long unreadable glance, his eyes picking apart the streaks of sweat and dried blood covering her bruised features, her own matted hair hanging loose around her face. They were all long overdue for a trip to the Imperially immaculate ‘fresher down the hallway.

“If they think it’s too inconvenient to clean,” she finally murmured by way of explanation, ignoring the near-constant ache in her throat, her soft voice echoing far too loudly after the length of silence, “they’ll cut it off.”

Cassian glanced at the trembling pilot sprawled limply across them as Jyn continued to work through the knotted dark hair. “They might cut it off anyways.”

Jyn shrugged, pressing her mouth into a thin line. She didn’t stop working through the tangle. After a few long minutes, Bodhi began to flinch almost imperceptibly when she tugged a strand of hair too hard. She took the increased responsiveness as a good sign.

Cassian had taken notice of his responses as well, slight though they were. The comfortingly rhythmic strokes of his thumbs across the shaking hands became more deliberate, and, after another moment of thick silence, he began to hum. Jyn paused and looked up in surprise, but he pointedly watched the trembling pilot as his hummed melody developed into a song. It was slow and soothing, a bit sad, almost like a lullaby. It was different from the little bits of melody Jyn still remembered from the songs her mother used to sing on Lah’mu, but every shaky note from his throat was undeniably beautiful.

Bodhi’s trembling lessened slowly, but steadily, until finally, _mercifully,_ his eyes slid shut and his breathing began to even out. Jyn dropped her head in relief and gave Cassian a rare tired smile, which he almost managed to return. The knotted mess was slowly turning into a clump of smooth strands beneath her fingers, the last of it finally coming apart with a firm tug. Bodhi’s hair was thick with sweat and grime, but it was long and soft under her fingers without the larger tangles.

“You next,” Cassian said softly, gently turning her chin away from him and running a hand down her own matted locks.

“Cassian, no,” she protested, pulling her hair out of his grasp, “Your fingers.”

“I’ll be fine,” he insisted, guiding her jaw again until she faced the far wall, a featureless durasteel sheet like the rest of the walls around them. “Let me do this.”

Jyn swallowed another protest and tried to relax her shoulders under his tentative fingers across the back of her neck. She was stiff from sitting still for so long with Bodhi resting over her legs, and her cracked ribs were aching in time with her heartbeat. Every part of her body had its own complaint, the scattered bruises and cracked bones and tiny burns like freckles across her skin, and one of her legs had fallen asleep, but somehow, she managed to let herself relax into Cassian’s touch as he started to work through the knots at the base of her neck.

“If I still had my lullaby pill, I would have given it to him.” Jyn stiffened once more at the words, nearly suspecting she had imagined the almost inaudible murmur behind her.

“Your suicide pill?” she replied, the words only half question. She glanced down at Bodhi, who still seemed to be sleeping as peacefully as she could possibly hope for, though a nightmare was likely not far. Cassian’s silence was an overwhelming affirmation to the question she didn’t quite ask.

Jyn clenched her teeth and tightened her grip protectively on the sleeping pilot. “We’re going to survive this, Cassian. We’re going to make it.”

“You really believe that?” He sounded so achingly tired. Since the captain had been identified as a Rebel Intelligence officer by their captures, he had borne the brunt of the interrogations, gone for hours at a time, twice as frequently as Jyn or Bodhi. Sometimes, he would vanish for a few days and come back clean and wet and smelling strongly of bacta, and she knew that they had tortured him to the brink and still brought him back for fresh torment. He wasn’t breaking; he was _eroding._ Jyn had to bury the thought that they were only torturing Bodhi and her in hopes of breaking Cassian through his companions’ suffering. It was the only reason she could come up with for still keeping them together. And surely by now, they had to know Bodhi knew little to nothing of consequence?

“I have to have hope,” Jyn finally said, knowing he would understand the echo of his own words spoken to her so long ago within the walls of a city already condemned.

_Rebellions are built on hope._

“Hope is all you need to keep living,” he hummed, like he was reading it off the wall over her shoulder, or like he was reciting it from a list. Jyn reached over silently and felt out where Cassian’s leg was resting, laying her hand on his knee. Whether it was a comfort, an agreement, or just a reminder to herself of his presence, Jyn wasn’t sure. But it felt right. Cassian let out a heavy breath and continued with her hair, hissing softly when he occasionally bumped his snapped finger bones against her scalp.

Jyn set her mouth, trying not to clench her fingers where Cassian could see them. They _would_ survive this. She was determined. They would not die until they were ready and at peace, not here, not like this.

It wouldn’t end like this.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first Rogue One fic, so please be kind. Comments and concrit greatly appreciated!
> 
> I unfortunately do not own Star Wars or anything in it.
> 
> Edit: First of all, thank you for your patience. I just finished finals week, so I can get back to thinking about writing again. 
> 
> Wow, I wasn't truly expecting people to love this or want more. This being the first story I've ever posted, I wasn't sure what to expect. Thank you so much! It was originally intended to be a one-shot without a lot of context, but then people actually read it and wanted more, so . . . thank you, Rozalia, misskatieleigh, Fanfic Lurker, and everyone who left kudos. You have quite literally given my story life. I've been working through an outline, some semblance of a plot, a proper setting, all the essentials basically, since a few days after posting, so once I get a basic outline, I'll start posting chapters again. Thank you so much everyone!
> 
> Edit again: I'm going to leave this as a one-shot for now. I will continue this story eventually - I can't not with how much more I've developed it since posting this - but it may be a while.


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